


The unbearable necessity of life with you when you're away

by amaresu



Category: Agents of Cracked
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/pseuds/amaresu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months is a long time to go without a major emergency.  Luckily they didn't go any longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The unbearable necessity of life with you when you're away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



> Many, many, thanks to [jessalae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/pseuds/jessalae) for the beta. You are lovely.
> 
> For my dear recipient, you gave me many amazing ideas and prompts. I used none of them in the final product. I hope you enjoy it regardless.

We lasted six months on the East Coast before being found. Six months of pure happiness and heroin sugar and sex with Daniel. Six months of the closest thing I've felt to bliss since I first gave up the gavel and gave comedy writing a try. It was probably the best six months of my life. Until one day Daniel just didn't come home from work. Or, more accurately since Dan worked from home, he just went to the store to pick up dinner and never came back. 

I didn't believe it at first. I waited in our grain silo all night for Daniel to come home. As the pale rays of daylight lit up the room I could only come to one conclusion. Something had happened to Dan and I had to figure out what. I put on my detective outfit with my detective weapons and shot three people before Sarge showed up and suggested we look at video surveillance of the area Daniel would've been walking.

It was more effective if not nearly as much fun. But I could put aside fun in the pursuit of Dan. I'd just save it all up for the people who took him from me. It didn't take long for Sarge to get Mandy to pinpoint the videos showing Dan. I didn't like the expression on her face when we finally found Daniel, my Daniel, hugging some random woman on the street and then getting into a car with her. 

“Looks like Daniel might not be kidnapped after all,” Mandy said and I regretted ever talking about Gossip Girl with her. Only Sarge kept me from employing some of my detective weapons to shut her stupid mouth.

Of course that was when Sarge betrayed me too, “Maybe O'Brien finally wised up or got therapy or something. I've heard of programs that help abused women escape, maybe this is something similar.”

“You shut your stupid-” I couldn't say what I really wanted. Even that enraged I knew it was Sarge I was talking to and Daniel wasn't here with bear tranquilizers, “We were happy!”

I flipped them off and knocked over the TV before storming out of the room. They didn't understand. No one understood me and Daniel. I did though and I knew Daniel wouldn't leave me. He'd had plenty of chances before agreeing to me sticking around indefinitely, an agreement sealed with sex in a hot air balloon. He also followed news of gay marriage more than made me comfortable up until now. I didn't think I was ready for a life long commitment, but with Daniel gone I knew I'd do anything to have him back. Forever.

Without Dan my world had become horribly less enjoyable, flat, and lifeless; kinda like how I remember Daniel Vision being. Even my rage couldn't come through properly knowing that Daniel wouldn't be there to put me down. I ended up in the hallway outside our silo, leaning against the wall, and contemplating all the places I'd hid knives on the East Coast. Maybe Daniel was using one of them right now to make his escape. 

Sarge came out just as I was about to make another go at detecting with my detecting shotgun. He stopped several feet from me and sighed, “Okay, this is how it's going to go. I'll find O'Brien. I'll see if he's been kidnapped. I'll rescue him if necessary. You'll stay here with Mandy and watch some CW tripe that makes me sick just to think about.”

I wanted to protest, I wanted to demand that I'd be the one to save Daniel, but I knew that Sarge had the best chance. So I did the only thing I could do, I hugged him until he got uncomfortable and planted about fifteen gps trackers on him. I finished it off with a big kiss on the cheek, “You're the best Sarge. You'll see, Daniel's just waiting for me to come and save him. Like Princess Peach waiting for Mario.”

“Yeah, but don't you think it's funny how Peach keeps getting kidnapped?” Sarge said as he lit a cigar and sauntered down the hall. 

I wanted to yell a rejoinder after him, but he had a point about Peach. Why did she keep getting kidnapped? You'd think she'd hire better bodyguards at least. 

Mandy had no interest in discussing the merits of Peach and kidnapping, instead opting to take a nap. Which worked out perfectly for me sneaking after Sarge. By the time I got out he had already removed seven of the trackers, but either hadn't found the other ones or didn't want to get rid of the knives and grenades they were attached to. My plan was working perfectly.

I stifled the maniacal laughter, grabbed a slushie, and sat down in the park to watch his movements. I didn't want to get too close to Sarge in case he figured out my plan. Sarge's movements didn't make a lot of sense as I watched the blinking dots that represented him move across the city. It kind of reminded me of that time Dan tried to hide the fact that he was going to that Horse convention with all the back tracking and removing of tracking devices. But I'd followed Dan that time and I'd follow Sarge this time.

Only now I was sad again thinking about Daniel. I got another slushie and dumped some random pills into it to make myself feel better. It didn't work, because pills, but Sarge stopped moving before I could get too disappointed. It looked like a silo out in the suburbs. Daniel's kidnappers were even more terrible then I'd previously thought. The suburbs, where Ebola ran rampant and no one laughed. 

I caught up to Sarge outside the silo. He was prying the last tracking device off of a grenade-knife combo I was particularly fond of and knew he'd want to keep. He sighed as I walked up, “Swaim. You're not going to like this-”

“You found Dan?” I cut him off. There were plenty of things I didn't like, but Daniel wasn't one of them.

“It wasn't hard.” He gestured to the silo across the street before throwing the last tracking device on the ground and smashing it. “It's best that you don't go in there.”

I didn't listen. I was already kicking in the front door. I was ready to kick ass, refuse to take names, and rescue Daniel. I wasn't ready to see him sitting in the living room playing Scrabble. The next few minutes got blurry until I focused on Daniel straddling me and holding my face while said, “Michael, Michael, Michael.”

“I'm back,” I looked around the room to see only minor destruction, Daniel must've tackled me quickly. Or I had just decided that Daniel straddling me was preferable to whole sale destruction. Which it was, “Scrabble, Daniel? Really?”

He got a shifty look in his eyes and I could see him trying not to look at something. Something next to me, I turned my head and saw Boggle hiding under the couch. It was too much, but Daniel cut me off, “It's not what it looks like Michael.”

“Not what it looks like?” I wanted to yell and scream and shoot bullets at stuff, but Daniel knew my secret weakness and stayed seated on me, effectively pinning me to the floor. I gave him my best malicious glare, “It looks like you were kidnapped and then let them seduce you with word games. Or, was Mandy right? Were you ever even kidnapped?”

He ran his hand over his head in that way I'd been trying not to let him know I liked, “Yes, of course I was kidnapped. Obviously. It's just the kidnappers were my old friends from college.”

I glared at the two people sitting in the room, belatedly recognizing them as Emily and Benjamin from Dan's old pictures, “I probably should've recognized them sooner.”

“So, what is this?” Sarge asked as he walked into the room holding a beer he'd probably stolen from the fridge. Somebody's fridge. “Some sort of cult intervention thing?”

“Yes,” Emily said as she not-so-subtly gestured for Daniel to come stand by her, “We don't know what you did to Dan, but we're going to fix him.”

“Dan doesn't need fixing!” I yelled, although he didn't struggle to get at her as Dan was still sitting on him. 

Sarge slurped his beer and made a contemplative noise, “Any merit to the suggestion O'Brien? Gotta admit I've wondered about Stockholm Syndrome on the rare occasions I thought about you two.”

Daniel waved his hand from side to side in the air, “I've done some reading, both on Stockholm Syndrome and cults in general, and come to the conclusion that it's probably not the case with me.”

“Yeah, there was those couple of months where you always had a new de-programming book on hand,” I grinned at the memory. “I figured it was some weird post-Mandy-breakup thing.”

“Speaking of where is she?” Daniel looked at Sarge who shrugged.

“Oh, I left her at our place. She said she was going to take a nap,” I smiled at Daniel and only got a little distressed by the troubled expression on his face. It helped that it wasn't his old Mandy-troubled expression, but a whole new troubled look. 

“Crap,” Dan stood up and walked over to hug the dirty kidnappers, Emily and Benjamin, “It's been lovely, you should call me some time, but we have to get home before Mandy decides to sell all of our stuff.”

“Gasp!” I said as I stood up. Mandy was one of my best friends, but that was just the sort of thing she would do, “She totally would do that.”

We were halfway out the door when Benjamin called out, “We don't have your phone number!”

“Right,” Daniel pulled out his notebook and wrote it down on a slip of paper before discovering that the hall had no place to leave the paper. I could tell he was about to walk down the hall and give it to them, but he hesitated; perhaps sensing, as I did, that Benjamin might attempt to grab Daniel and run if he got within range. 

Instead Daniel reached on top of the door frame and grabbed the knife that was there, using it to stick the note with his number on it to the wall. I knew at that moment that I'd never been more in love with Daniel. We were so getting married as soon as it was legal.


End file.
